During Don Cherry's one season coaching the Colorado Rockies, Denver was dotted with billboards that proclaimed: "Come to the fights and watch a Rockies game break out!" That image of hockey is forever burned on the brains of casual hockey fans - when I try to explain that hockey is different now, people laugh. But the game really has changed. For example, misconducts have dropped by a factor of four over the last 20 years, and game misconducts are six times lower:
Not surprisingly, the misconduct leaders of the last 20 years are almost all out of the game:
| Player | Misc |
| Gino Odjick | 60 |
| Craig Berube | 56 |
| Marty McSorley | 54 |
| Chris Chelios | 50 |
| Basil Mcrae | 49 |
| Matthew Barnaby | 48 |
| Gary Roberts | 46 |
| Kelly Chase | 44 |
| Mick Vukota | 42 |
| Donald Brashear | 41 |
Same goes for Game Misconduct leaders:
| Player | GM |
| Gino Odjick | 30 |
| Bryan Marchment | 30 |
| Marty McSorley | 28 |
| Bob Probert | 28 |
| Jim Cummins | 28 |
| Kelly Chase | 25 |
| Brendan Shanahan | 25 |
| Craig Berube | 24 |
| Gary Roberts | 24 |
| Lyle Odelein | 24 |
Major Penalties are also down, though nowhere near as drastically as misbehavior-related misconducts:
The leaders in major penalties over the last 20 years are also mostly retired. Laperriere likely has a few years left, so he could conceivably finish in 5th place:
| Player | Majors |
| Tie Domi | 273 |
| Jeff Odgers | 246 |
| Craig Berube | 244 |
| Robert Ray | 241 |
| Stu Grimson | 217 |
| Donald Brashear | 216 |
| Bob Probert | 205 |
| Kelly Buchberger | 203 |
| Matthew Barnaby | 198 |
| Ian Laperriere | 195 |
Obviously, our list is missing a lot of pre-1987 majors. Surprisingly, penalties peaked on a per-game basis not in the "Slapshot" era, but in 1991, so we still capture a lot of the biggest penalty-takers of all-time - and of the future: it is very difficult for a modern NHL player to rack up the kinds of penalties that we saw in the past.